My Iridescent Green Slacks

Stood on the bloody gold mountain
of war booty my young friends and I
were to inherit from our fathers’
wounds and our mothers’ wounds
and this world’s wounds.
Stood trying to think using my very own
government-issue army-surplus
olive-drab SS-number-stencilled
individual baby-boomer mind.
Stood on layers of bone yards
going back to the beginning of beginning.
Stood near the center of a new and
worldwide fortress named freedom.
Stood trying to make out
furious dying voices leaking whispers
from the edges of newspapers.
Stood trying not to believe
the miniature wars of the schoolyard
reflected the glacially ruinous
wars of this world.
Stood in my favorite
iridescent green slacks
that went so well with
my starry young nausea.
Stood and ached and ached
for any example
of how to stand up to all of this.